Putnam Fair Board Seeking To Honor Long-Serving Families Of Fair

The Putnam County Fair Board is looking for “Legacy Families” who have contributed to the success of the county fair.

President John Allen said that as they move from the old fairgrounds to the new expo center, they want to find a way to honor and thank those families for their service.

“That’s really here secret behind the success of our fair,” Allen said. “We have a great county fair. And it’s primarily because we have a series of families who have supported it over and over and over again for the past 50, 65, 75 years.”

Allen said that a Legacy Family is one that has a cumulative of 50 years or more of service to the fair, be it through volunteering or funding. He said that he estimates some 50 families in the county that meet these criteria. He said they plan on having some kind of permanent distinction at the new location to mark those families as a part of the fair’s history.

Allen said that the idea for Legacy Families came about because they want to gain more records for the history of the fair.

“If we don’t record things like this then we’re going to lose the value of our history,” Allen said. “And we think it’s important. One of the things when I came to be president, there’s not a lot of cumulative fair history. And we’ve worked with the Archives and Glenn Jones over several projects not to record fair history and this is just another one of those things that’s critically important that we remember and make note of it and record it for history’s sake.”

Allen said that if you think you meet the criteria for a Legacy Family, you can email the fair board or mail in your information. He said that they would like to see the information in writing so they can correspond with those people and gain more information.